Sheri S. Tepper - The Companions

SHERI S. TEPPER

THE COMPANIONS

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FIRST EDITION

Designed by Adrian Leichter

Printed on acid-free paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tepper, Sheri S.

The companions / Sheri S. Tepper.- 1st ed.

p. cm. ISBN 0-06-053821-X

I. Title.

PS357O.E673C66 2003 813'.54-dc21

2002044792

03 04 05 06 07 WBC/RRD 10 987654321

IN LOVING MEMORY OF KYBO, SKEETER,

TIBBY, BEANS, TIBESKIBO, SCHMUTZIE,

MOGUL, MELITZA, MUFFY, AND ALL THE

LEGION OF DEPARTED COMPANIONS,

AND WITH JOYOUS APPRECIATION OF

PUPUP AND LULABELLE, THE CURRENT

GLAD REVENANTS OF THE SPECIES

THE LITANY

OF ANIMALS

elemental, monumental, fine phantasmic elephants;

hairless hippopotami, huddled close as spoons;

riotous rhinoceri, roistering on grasslands;

tiny tender tarsiers, eyes like moons;

plump pied pandas, pretty as a picture;

gay, giggling gibbons, gamboling in the trees;

awl-nosed aardvarks, excavating anthills;

glowering gorillas lolly gagging at their ease.

light on the leaf mold, feather-footed field mouse,

tiny as a hazelnut, the bloodthirsty shrew

off in the outback, wombat, numbat,

gone to have a meeting with kid kangaroo

bulky-shouldered bison, built like a bastion,

wily alligator, floating like a log

wolf in the wildlands, jackal in the jungle,

dutiful and diligent, man's friend, dog.

horrible hyenas, hairy noses quivering;

wildly running wildebeests, sometimes called the gnu,

laugh-provoking lemurs, loitering on tree limbs,

melancholy mandrill with his bottom painted blue

overbearing ostrich, fluttering his feathers

boulder-bounding ibex, helmed like a knight

curve-backed camel, king of the desert

prickly, stickly porcupine no animal will bite

big brown bruin bear, walking as a man does

toucan with a great tall trumpet for a nose

bald-headed vultures, vittling on vipers

(vultures will eat anything as everybody knows)

mad male orangutan, face like a soup bowl

curious xenopus, peculiarly made

quagga, quail, and quetzal, quaint concatenation.

solitary tiger, strolling in the shade

loudmouthed jackass, braying jeremiads;

bald-faced uakaris, kinky kinkajou;

high hairy travelers, yaks upon the mountain;

bringing up the rear with Zebra and Zebu.

THE COMPANIONS

THE PLACE

The moss world, so said one XT-ploitation writer who had reviewed first-contact images

of it, was a Victorian parlor of a planet, everywhere padded and bolstered, its cliffs hung

with garlands, its crevasses softened with cushions, every cranny silk-woven, every

surface napped into velvet. Here were peridot parklands where moss piled itself into

caverned outcrops of sapphire shade. There were violet valleys, veiled in lavender and

wine across a mat of minuscule, multicolored moss beads. In that clearing the morning

light shone on infant parasols, ankle high, that by noon had sprung upward to become

umbrellas, guyed with hair-thin fibers, ribs flung wide to hold feather-light sails that

turned softly, softly through the afternoon, shading the sporelings beneath.

Along the canyons were fragrant forests where every footfall released scents that evoked

aching nostalgia, as though racial memory held sensations undetected for centuries:

Cedar perhaps? Sandalwood? Maybe piñon or frankincense? Maybe something older

than any of those? The riversides were endless alleys cushioned in aquamarine and jade,

hung with curtains that moved like the waves of a shifting ocean, hiding, then

disclosing-so it was claimed-the flame-formed inhabitants of this place.

If, that is, the Exploration and Survey Corps really saw them. If the people from

Planetary Protection Institute really saw them. After each sighting the men sought

confirmation from their complicated devices and found no evidence of the beings they

had perceived. The machines confirmed small grazing and burrowing creatures, yes;

they confirmed tall, gaunt trees that served as scaffolding for the epiphytic fabric of the

world, but these others ... these wonders ... Everyone described the same shapes, the

same behaviors, the same colors. Formed like flames, endlessly dancing, an evanescent

blaze in the morning, a shimmering shadow in the dusk. Rarely seen, unmistakable

when seen, but never yet recorded...

"Along that ridge, shining, a whole line of them..."

"Right. I saw them. Like huge candles..."

What had they seen? That was undoubtedly the question.

A Garr'ugh shipclan of the Derac, a race nomadic by nature, had found Moss quite by

accident when their clan-ship was sucked into an instability at one arm of the galaxy and

spewed out in another. Subsequently, the exploration and survey of the three inner

planets-the rock world, the jungle world, the moss world-were farmed out on shares to

Earthian Enterprises. The Derac were accustomed to farming out work to Earthers.

Humans prided themselves on their work- an emotion felt, so far as anyone knew, only

by humans, as most other starfaring races considered "work" a sign of serfdom, which

among them it invariably was. Earthers felt differently. They had their own Exploration

and Survey Corps, ESC, and their own Planetary Protection Institute, PPI, a branch of the

Interstellar Planetary Protection Alliance, of which Earth was a member. More

importantly, Earthers were a settling type of people who seemed not to mind staying in

one place as long as it took to do an adequate job of assessing new planets. Accordingly,

Earth Enterprises, on behalf of PPI and ESC, was awarded a contract by the Derac to

explore and survey, using, of course, the IPPA guidelines governing such activities on

newly discovered worlds.

Accordingly they came. They saw. They were conquered.

Two-thirds of the planet's surface was taken up by the mosslands where the Earthers

sought to answer IPPA's primary question: Did a native people exist? Time spun by, a

silver web; they felt what they felt and saw what they saw, but they could not prove

what they felt or saw was real. They thought, they felt there was a people, peoples upon

Moss, but did a people really exist?

Did the men and women of PPI themselves exist? Their days on Moss went by like

dreams passed in a chamber of the heart, a systole of morning wind, a throb of noon sun,

an anticipatory pulsation of evening cool that was like the onset of apotheosis, a day

gone by in a handful of heartbeats as they waited for something marvelous that would

happen inevitably, if they were simply patient enough.

Patience wasn't enough. IPPA required specific information about newly discovered

worlds. Was the ecology pristine or endangered? Were there intelligent inhabitants, and

if there were, were they indigenous, immigrants, or conquerors? Did they occupy the

entire planet? Were they threatened? Did they consider themselves a part of or the

owners of the world on which they lived? Were other races of intelligent creatures native

to the world, or had any been imported or rendered extinct? If there were various views

on these matters among the inhabitants, might they be amenable to referring the matters

to IPPA for resolution? These questions had to be answered! These and a thousand

more!

Moss could not be opened to habitation, trade, or visitation until it was certified by

IPPA. Moss could not be certified by IPPA until the information was received. The

information could not be received until the blanks in the forms were filled in, but the

blanks in the forms remained exactly that.

How could one determine prior claims from creatures that fled like visions? Were they

inhabitants? Possibly, though they were as likely to be events. Often, truly, they seemed

to be hallucinogenic happenings, light and motion flung together by wind and

imagination. Perhaps they were a new kind of creature: ecological animations! Such

suggestions met with incomprehension back on Earth, where the carbon life-form branch

office of IPPA was located.

Where IPPA was all judgment, Earth's own ESC made no judgments at all. The only task

of Exploration and Survey was to record everything, to take note of everything, to

determine the history of everything and establish not only how one thing related to

another, but also whether each thing fit into a category that would be meaningful to

intelligent persons of various races. Though Exploration and Survey Corps was a

subsidiary of Earth Enterprises, a purely human organization, operated for profit and

without any interstellar governing body, the Corps had to interface with IPPA and

therefore used IPPA categories and definitions for its reports.

There was no IPPA category for beautiful. Humans had several times suggested such a

category to IPPA, but no other race had a similar concept. Beauty was not quantifiable,

said IPPA. The Tharst recognized a quality they called Whomset. The Quondan spoke of

the quality of M'Corb. Neither race could define these things, though they said they

knew it when they encountered it. IPPA did not recognize things that couldn't be

defined and measured by proprietary devices, mechanical, electronic, or biotech. For

IPPA's purposes, human beings along with most other beings were biological devices

that lacked standardization. No race with such sayings as "Beauty is in the eye of the

beholder," or "There's no accounting for tastes," could pretend to define beauty in terms

the various races would accept.

The lack of Beauty-as well, possibly, as the lack of Whomset or M'Corb-was crippling on

Moss. How did one record odors that seemed to be presences? What was the meaning of

these rioting colors: these flaming scarlets so joyous as to make the heart leap, these

greyed purples so somber as to outmourn black? What was the relationship among

these thousand tints and hues, pure, mixed, nacreous, opalescent, ever shifting? What

profit was there in this giddy growth and incessant motion?

On Moss, the winds were sculptors, molding the stuff as it grew, weaving tasseled ropes

into swaying ladders from high branch to high branch, shredding chiffon tissue into

feathered fringes along bare boughs, sometimes puffing beneath a fragile carpet and

lifting it to make a glowing gossamer tent between the sky and those who walked

beneath. Such constructions were often ephemeral, no sooner seen with breath-caught

wonder than they dissolved into a momentary aureole suffused with sun-shattered rays

of amber, scarlet, and coral. Strictly speaking, moss did not flower, but on Moss it

pretended to do so, in clamorous colors and shapes out of drugged fantasy.

As their separate purposes demanded, ESC and PPI approached their tasks differently.

ESC lived behind force screens on a small island in a large lake, an island that had been

ringed and roofed with force shields then cleaned down to the bedrock with flame and

sterilants to protect the workers from any Mossian scintilla afloat in the atmosphere. On

the island, the Earthers walked freely, but when they came ashore, they wore noncons,

noncontact suits. They did not breathe the air or drink the water on the mainland, they

did not put their skin against the skin of the world. They received reports from PPI,

which they remeasured and requantified before filing, or, if measurement was

impossible, which they filed under various disreputable categories such as "alleged,"

"professed," "asserted." With ESC, nothing was sensed directly; everything was

measured by devices. It was said of ESC personnel that they were the next thing to

hermits, monks, or robots, and it was true that Information Service selected persons who

were loners by nature, content with silence.

PPI, on the other hand, had to experience a world to make judgments about it, and its

people fell into Moss as into a scented bath, only infrequently coming up for air. Baffled

by change, assaulted by sensation, each day confronting a new landscape, PPI people

spent days at a time forgetting their purpose. The seasons were marked by shifts of

color, by drifts of wind, by smells and shapes and a certain nostalgic tenderness that

came and went, like a memory of lost delight. Time, on Moss, was a meaningless

measurement of nothing much.

PPI was abetted in its lethargy. Exploration of the world Jungle, in this same system, had

ended in a disaster dire enough to demonstrate that impatience might be a mistake. If

one hurried things, one might end up as those poor PPI fellows had on Jungle, where

both men and reputations had been lost and nothing had been discovered as

compensation. PPI could not explain its failure. Back on Earth, those in command, who

had no idea what a jungle world was like, or indeed what any primitive world was like,

decided that PPI had been overeager, had pressed too far, too quickly. ESC, responsible

for housing and protecting the team on Jungle, had allowed too much liberty, too

quickly. Do not make this same mistake, they said, on Moss.

Obediently, ESC people on Moss considered, reconsidered, weighed, and reweighed,

becoming more eremitic with each day that passed. Gratefully, PPI personnel on Moss

added Authorized Dawdle to the snail-creep imposed by the planet itself. Dazedly they

wandered and dreamed and fell into intimacy with the sounds and smells and visions of

the place. Finally, after years of this, the Moss folk rewarded them all by emerging from

the shadows onto the meadows along the shore, and dancing there in patterns of

sequined flames. Every off-planet person on Moss saw them. Every recorder turned

upon them recorded them. Every person saw the curved bodies of the Mossen, as they

were subsequently dubbed, aflutter in a bonfire of motion, gliding and glittering in a

constant murmur of musical babble that might have been speech. If they spoke.

Who knew if they spoke? Did they have powers of perception? Did they see their

visitors? They showed no sign of it except when one man or another wanted a closer

view and attempted to approach. As anyone crossed the invisible line, the Mossen

vanished, floating upward in a spasm of light, the carpet of their dancing floor raised

beneath them, veiling them from below. Moss itself was a wonder, a marvel beyond

comprehension. The Mossen who inhabited it remained a mystery, an enigma that

battled understanding.

The ESC island was just offshore of the meadow where the Mossen danced. The

compound of PPI lay on the shore beside that meadow. The compound contained a

number of individual houses-cum-workstations gathered around the commissary hall,

where meals were prepared and meetings held. The outsides of the buildings had been

mossened with green and yellow, red and gray within a day of their erection, though the

insides, inexplicably, remained unfestooned. The largest building served as a

headquarters, and it was there that Duras Drom, the mission chief, sat at his console,

sifting his records, searching for something, anything to help him out of his dilemma.

What he found only complicated it.

"When did this report from ESC come in, the one about the ships?"

His lieutenant gave him a thoughtful look as though from a distance of some miles.

"What report?"

"Here," said Drom, pointing. "Earther ships, old ones, up on the nearest plateau."

The other man, Bar Lukha, rose and stumbled across the room and back, pausing briefly

to look over Drom's shoulder. "Dunno. Haven't seen it. Sage must've entered it. There,

let's see, what's today? Hmm. Looks like fourteen, fifteen days ago."

"They found ships! And nobody mentioned it!"

"As you said, old ones," said the other, dismissively. "Mossed all over. Nobody in

them."

"They're Hargess ships!"

"Really? Hmmm. I suppose the Hargess Hessings might want to know about it."

"You suppose so, do you? Of course they'll want to know about it. Even families with

enough money to send off whole fleets of ships on damned fool errands are interested in

what happens to them!"

"Ah." Bar Lukha shook his head as he passed his dreaming gaze across his fellow as

though scanning shadows. "They've written them off, long since. They've been lost up on

that escarpment too long to be of concern. It's no wonder nobody saw them until

recently. You really want to open things up..."

Drom cursed, quietly, thoughtfully. Though the persons who had traveled in those ships

or had owned those ships, or their heirs, might have a reasonable claim to the planet

itself, the process of exploration and categorization, inconclusive though it was, had

advanced so far that no one would welcome a suggestion to start over. Such a

suggestion would infuriate the Derac. And others.

He had no intention of suggesting it. He would simply forward the report. Let the

higher-ups suggest whatever they wanted to. His soul told him this world should be left

to the creatures who occupied it, but he could find no hard evidence of intelligent life.

He had only one concrete fact to use as a bar against this planet being opened up,

visited, utilized, colonized, destroyed, but he did not wish to mention that one thing.

Still, despite all the earlier protestations of patience, Exploration and Survey Corps was

growing itchy. Taking time was one thing, they said. Taking forever was another. ESC

didn't get paid until something definitive happened. Several days ago Earth Enterprises

had demanded a report, a preliminary judgment, a few words to indicate what was

going on. Either that, or they'd pull their people out, contract or no contract.

This directive in hand, Drom had gone to his mirror to consult with himself, there being

no one else of appropriate status left to consult. His consciousness hovered between two

sets of identically accusatory eyes, himself glaring at himself reflected; himself, head of

station; accountable to no one but himself; knowing himself to have willingly

succumbed to the delirium of Moss, to have repeatedly indulged himself and, yes,

others, in behavior that PPI HQ would consider ... no! That he himself considered

improper.

The only remedy for this infraction was to stay out of the forest, to confine himself to

quarters. The PPI team could not possibly decide anything sensibly when too many

people in it, including Drom himself, were consistently guilty of delight, guilty of

spending seasons at a time lying half-buried in mossy softness, frittering away years

while smelling joy in the air as though each moment were eternal!

Oh, yes. PPI had disported itself, at least those given to disporting had done so, and

when certain puritans among them had questioned this nonchalance toward duty, Drom

himself had allowed it to go on. Hadn't he commanded and hadn't they served as the

PPI team on Jungle, twelve years ago, when eleven of their fellows had vanished into

that overgrown weed patch leaving no sign, no signal, no nothing to mark where they

had gone or what had taken them? Hadn't they had nightmares afterward, as though

from a lasting poison that affected only the sleeping mind? Hadn't they gone directly

from the Jungle to Stone, where they'd been daily dust-dazzled, sun-staggered,

half-melted by the heat? On Stone, even PPI personnel could not touch the surface or

allow the surface to touch them, but it was a great-grandmother lode of rare ores, the

most profitable new world found in a century. Still, living things had been found in

stranger environments, and years had spun by in baking chaos and a madness of mining

machines, while PPI went through the motions of searching for indigenous life so that no

one, no people could accuse them of slacking their duty.

After all that, didn't they have some pleasure coming, some relaxation? He had thought

so, said so, though what they had earned and what was appropriate were two different

things. The truth was they would not be allowed to remain on Moss no matter what they

reported or found or believed. Those who didn't die here would be sent somewhere else

quite shortly. Where that place might be and how well or badly they would live there

could depend significantly on the overall profit or loss coming from these three planets.

Profit or loss, defeat or victory, fines or bonus pay hinged upon what was found here, in

this system. Jungle had been a total loss; Stone a bonanza; and Moss was an enigma.

Finding an intelligent race on this planet, or, if there was none, being able to say so

definitively would make the planet bankable. It would put them on the high plus side,

the very high plus side. Everyone knew that, but even now, after all this time on Moss,

that basic question remained unanswered. Until it was answered, what was the place

good for?

Nothing that made money. Retirement, perhaps. Several of the PPI people originally

assigned to Moss had been old-timers. They had communicated with colleagues near

retirement, and some of the oldsters had arrived, "assigned to temporary duty," and they

had been followed by others yet. The installation had been enlarged, at first, to house

additional personnel, though no additions had been needed recently. The PPI

contingent roll was three or four times longer than the rolls of those surveying any other

known world. Of course, the rolls were only paper. The people, bodily, were seldom to

be found.

Was there an intelligent race on Moss?

"... if the flame folk are intelligent, there's a bonus," he said, dreaming into the silence of

the room.

"I know," said the young lieutenant from his seat before a bank of monitors. "That's what

the ESC expert said. If they're intelligent, we profit."

"An intelligent race is a market," Drom mused. "And a new market is worth money, once

you find out what it wants and needs."

Bar Lukha considered this through long moments of silence, saying at last, "But the

Mossen don't need anything."

"How do we know?" Drom asked. "The Mossen don't talk. They don't do anything but

dance."

"Right." The word drawled out, spinning itself into something more than mere

agreement. Into connivance. Into complicity.

Drom said desperately, "Even if they're people, if they don't talk or interact in some way,

we can't establish intelligence. If there's no intelligence, we have to leave and let the real

estate guys take over."

Lukha kept his eyes fixed on his monitors, which were dancing for no reason. He had

not been able to find out what was happening. For days now, the monitors had been

dancing to sounds he couldn't hear, electromagnetic activity he couldn't locate. He had

finally decided the dials were doing it because they liked it, because it was more fun

than standing still.

"We'd stay if they-you know, them. If they wanted emergence," he remarked, in a

preoccupied voice.

"If they wanted emergence, yes." More than anything, Drom wanted to stay here, to do

what he had spent years doing before he had sentenced himself to confinement: take off

his clothes, wander off into the mosses, eat the sweet bulbs of dew that formed on the

Sheri S. Tepper - The Companions

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